Research into Goffin’s cockatoos’ tool behaviour started after a captive male named Figaro spontaneously and reliably manufactured tools by cutting splinters out of larch wood, using them to rake in food placed behind the aviary grid. In a set of 10 observations, Figaro showed nine instances of tool making, one involving a different substrate (snipping of a branch from a leafless twig). As he took approximately four times as long to make his first tool as for any subsequent tool it is likely that we recorded his original innovation event.